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Monday, June 6, 2016
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This new collaboration hopes to aid the endless debates about media with some actual hard data“For a long time, I’ve wanted to try to put more data and quantitative analysis behind some of the claims and questions we ask around underrepresented and misrepresented stories in online spaces.” By Shan Wang. |
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What happens when a 50-something journalist gets a week’s worth of news from Snapchat Discover?The founder of PolitiFact finds distracting soundtracks and stale headlines, but also a fair amount of lively and effective content. By Bill Adair. |
What We’re Reading
The Information / Tom Dotan
The big digital publishers’ valuations “appear increasingly beyond rational” to some →
“It makes sense to award high revenue multiples to companies in fast-growing businesses like digital advertising. But several of these digital media companies are becoming more like traditional media businesses, drawing revenue from slow-growth sectors.”
AdWeek
How Bill Simmons’ The Ringer will be more than just ‘Grantland 2.0’ →
For starters, The Ringer isn’t part of a corporate behemoth like ESPN, but rather, it is part of The Bill Simmons Media Group, which is run by former NFL Network executive producer Eric Weinberger. “It’s just a much different entity here,” said Fennessey. “There’s a little bit more of a spirit of experimentation.”
International Business Times / Brendan James
The AP is creating a native ad agency for its members →
“If you're an outlet that can't always afford to report on the goings-on in New Guinea, for instance, you can subscribe to the Associated Press and pull one of its reports. Similarly, if you're a struggling outlet unable to pump out high-end sponsored content, you could now pull that content from the AP as well.”
AdAge / Jeremy Barr
New York Times “exploring” ad-free digital subscription →
“‘More than 40%’ of non-subscribers who received undismissable requests whitelisted the Times, Mr. Thompson said. And ‘no fewer than 30%’ of subscribers agreed to whitelist the Times when shown a dismissable request to do so.”
The New York Times / Nicholas Fandos
The watchdog organization that shepherded the Panama Papers is now constrained by finances →
The consortium, which is also moving offices in an effort to cut costs, is feeling ripple effects from the financial struggles of its parent organization, the Center for Public Integrity, the venerable nonprofit investigative news organization that controls the consortium's budget.
Poynter / Benjamin Mullin
No longer chasing scale, Longform is building a site meant to last for years →
A new “popular” section was conceived “as a tool to eliminate the gap between articles people share on Twitter (often in a boastful way) and the articles that Longform’s site data shows people actually finish.”
Politico / Hadas Gold and Alex Spence
BuzzFeed pulls out of advertising agreement with the Repbulican National Committee over Donald Trump →
“We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company,” BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Perretti wrote in a staff email. “However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.”
Ad Week / Marty Swant
People prefer ads in podcasts over any other digital medium, claims one comScore study →
Two thirds of listeners have acted on ads they heard in a podcast either by researching a product or service or by actually purchasing something they first heard about in an episode, according to a study commissioned by podcast startup Wondery (the study included 2,000 U.S. respondents ages 18 to 49).
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Publishers give mixed reviews so far to Google AMP, three months in →
For Slate and the Atlantic — who’ve been formatting nearly all their content for AMP, AMP pages currently account for four percent or less of site visits.
Ad Age / Jeremy Barr
Refinery29, focused on global expansion, hits Germany →
The New York-based company has hired a German team to lead the site, which will run both original, locally-produced content and translated content from refinery29.com. The women’s focused site is more than a decade old now.
Digiday / Jessica Davies
The Guardian built its own mobile ad units →
“Enter "Frame" and "Focus:" Frame is a responsive native ad unit that mirrors the editorial environment in design, and can fit within pages where the content is contextually relevant. Focus is specifically for mobile web and in-app, and has an interactive sliding gallery for images advertisers want to feature.”